Winter Solstice Special Blog: “The Inger Effect”

Winter Solstice Special Blog: “The Inger Effect”

Readers Summary

What does a starfish look like who has adopted Epi-Paleo and CT?

What role may living in Scandinavia have?

What does CT look like?

Meet Inger on the Winter Solstice (My favorite day of the year!)

This is a new guest blog from a forum member named Inger, who you can find on our website forum. She has had an amazing transformation! I thought on my favorite day of the year, I would share with a story to warm your heart. Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas to you and yours!

Hi. I am Inger.

I want to share a bit from my journey with you, as I am so thankful for the huge benefits I have gained from this site. It has opened my eyes in so many ways and helped me understand. Thank you, Jack, for letting me share.

I love to think about this path as a journey towards waking up my 6th sense. I love that. This is so much more than just about foods, body shape, anything like that. It is so deep and broad; it is huge! I am in love. It is like I am part of the huge, beautiful universe, a oneness I often feel deep in my bones these days that is just amazing and peaceful. Sometimes I feel like I hear music inside me, music of joy. But it is totally silent around me. How magic is that?

I am blaming it on Jack and his flashlight, and the community on this site. Am I slowly starting to fall madly in love with myself?! Like I finally understand I am allowed to, that it is even demanded! Yes. It is indeed demanded from me. I am the one and only person that is responsible for taking care of me and loving me. It is just starting to evolve, but there are moments it is so strong I feel pure joy, like I would all of the sudden get wings. I often feel like dancing.

I have had a not-so-easy time in my life these last years, until now. I feared so many things. Finally, I am beginning to take seriously the need to care about me, finding that little child inside me that I had ignored most time for so long.

The deep words of wisdom and philosophy I get from this site altogether slowly helps me get the courage to face who I really am. Because that is what love is, isn’t it? Not to fear. Love and fear do not go well together at all, I am thinking.

To remain humble, even if fighting like a lion, has been a challenge to me.

I have had to witness painful stuff in my surroundings. How one can end when the humble part is left undeveloped? It scares me. I want deep humility to penetrate me. But sometimes I got lost; I do not know how. It is like without it, I cannot evolve. I have a feeling that the heavy stuff that happens in one’s life helps to remain humble, though. So I am not asking for an easy life. It could be difficulties with people close to me, or a trip to the shop with my bike in an icy snowstorm, or anything else that is demanding. I feel it helps to look up in the sky, too.

To face my brokenness demands courage, too

I have been contemplating this a lot. If I do not realize how broken I am, I will not know to look for help either, for sure. To be able to feel my brokenness is a blessing, I think today, because that is the very beginning to change and healing. Out from my brokenness, I become willing to take major steps to regain health. I am way more broken than I thought at first. I did not know before. I did not know what I could possibly be. But this fact also makes it easy to go stricter with the healing protocol. I know the stricter I am, the better results I get. I am struggling myself at times ,too (yes, I am human), but I know what to do. And if it does not go as fast as I want, I at least know why, so I do not complain. I love how Jack tells us to not settle for mediocre as so common in today’s world. It all depends, what do we really want?

Healing is not linear either, as the doc says. There are ups and downs. I have had to face that. But the ups are getting stronger. I am giving myself time, much time.

If it sometimes gets a little too hard I tell myself, “Adapt or die”. It helps. I also imagine someone I know, adore, and look up to because of their courage, in front of my inner eye. It always helps, too.

A bit more about me

As a kid, I had lots of different allergies and asthma. We lived in a moldy house. I was breastfed for almost one year, for which I am so very thankful!

My mom told me later that when she was pregnant with me, she and my dad were so short of money, she ate almost only potatoes and grains, as they were so cheap. I was already born with wrinkles under my eyes and hey, isn’t it candy I am holding in my hands in the right picture?

Looking at those pictures makes me want to go back to when I was a child and do it all again. When I was still unbroken. But it actually is what I am doing now, peeling layer by layer off, and I am going back to that inner child full of curiosity, peace, and joy.

I always felt ill from sweets. I ate them anyway. We seldom had any, but they made me feel terrible. I craved herring and salty stuff instead! I remember that very clearly. Sometimes, we had salted herrings in summer. We had liverwurst and butter at school, because in Finland all kids get a warm lunch for free. I put a huge amount of liverwurst on my bread with butter. Amazing memories. We had only the cheapest baking margarine on bread at home. It was so yucky. In school, I was allowed to eat all the butter I wanted and I did! I craved cod-liver oil, too. I loved it. We got one spoonful every morning as most Norwegian kids do. I could easily have emptied the whole bottle!

At Easter, each kid got one whole egg. One’s own egg! The whole egg was mine alone. It was so solemn.

There were 15 kids, so it was understandable the money was short. My parents did the best they could. I am very thankful today that we grew up without TV, cell phones, or any electronic games. What a blessing. Instead, we played outside in the snow. Mom let us run barefoot in the snow if we liked; it was so fun. We had to walk 5 km to school and back in any weather. I guess I already had a love relationship with the powers of the nature and the seasons, because I was allowed to explore them. My siblings and I went into the sauna, too, once a week and rolled naked in the snow to cool down, even the youngest one that could barely walk! This must have done so much good when food was not so ideal.

Later, I developed a passion for cooking. I especially enjoyed baking cakes. That was not so good, I think.

As a young girl, I suffered quite a lot from allergies, so I took antihistamines frequently. I developed bulimia when around 18 years old and also had a reoccurring peritonsillar abscess so bad that my doctor told me I had to remove my tonsils. I was too scared to go to the surgery, so I did not. I was also very scared about getting cancer as I always loved to read and had been reading some scary stuff about it. I got so freaked out as I felt a lump in my breast in my late teens. I did not tell anybody. That is when I really started to try to change my eating patterns and other habits. Today, I feel my fear was a blessing in a way, as I still have my tonsils and every organ and part of my body intact.

I instinctively knew that if I gave myself into the hands of the doctor, I might end up suffering much more. So I gladly took my health into my own hands, welcoming the risks and the work I knew it would bring.

I did take a funny route about my healthy eating in the beginning. I believed soy milk and tofu were super foods, vegetable oils, too, and dark whole grain bread for sure! After all, that is what was said in every health book I read. But I always moved to greater light when I was not satisfied with the results of my current beliefs and diet. Once, I fasted for three weeks in the coldest winter and lost 20 pounds. I felt great. I had no clue that I had chosen the perfect time for fasting! I guess the fact that I ate way less cakes, sweets, and processed food already made a difference.

I found raw foods about eight years ago.

Because I still felt a bit tired during the day always and was not happy with my body comp, I just knew I was not perfectly well. So I figured instead of fasting again, I could just try all-raw for a week, just to test. So I started to eat everything raw. I also ate meat and fish, but mostly fruit and vegetables and nuts. This made a huge difference in my health and feeling, especially my mood. So I continued with raw food after this first week.

I did not got rid of my bulimia 100 percent, even though it got much better. I still had the occasional binges and purges, often after eating too much fruit. I could not stop! But I did not felt satisfied. And after a heavy fruit meal, I got huge cravings for something salty, such as bread. My skin was not the best. I also got very thin, weighed only 46 kg (101.5 pounds). I am 166cm/5’5” (I weighed 65 kg/143 pounds at my heaviest). My teeth suffered from all the fruit, but I was kind of addicted to it.

Then we got into real financial troubles and there was no money for all the expensive fruits anymore. I had to figure out another solution. That was when I found zero-carb. It was in the winter, around Christmas time. I figured, I could try that as that would cost me only the half of my raw-fruit-heavy diet, but raw (mostly).

I did the zero-carb and felt even better because my energy become so very stable. On a fruit-heavy diet, I was maybe a little hyper I guess. All of a sudden, my bulimia existed no more. Even if I binged on meat and fat, I never got the urge to purge! I could not believe how stable I felt. I ate mostly raw organic ground beef. Some raw liver, pasteurized HWC, butter, coconut oil, pemmican, fish, a little wild greens. I ate like this about 1.5 years and then I found Jack’s blog, right from the beginning. I was looking for optimal still, because I felt there was still place for much improvement. I was not totally happy with my body (cellulite, etc.). My sleep was not the best.

I was living in Germany, at this time, and I suffered in the summers. I never felt as well as I did in the summer in Finland. It was just too hot. On the contrary, I always kept it so warm at home in winter; I didn’t like the cold at all. I was late on my computer, in bright lights. I did so much wrong. But I had no idea.

I knew immediately as I read Jack’s first blog post that I had found gold.

I knew Jack was honest. He was not like any guru that holds on to what they have found, but what actually belongs to the past, unwilling to give it up because of dogma or some personal wins like money. I could see by his replies and how he wrote that he was a humble soul. I don’t know if written words have a scent, but Jack’s writings had a beautiful scent to me.

From then on, I followed every single post and did the leptin reset, too. I did it all. When the CT series came out, I started with Cold Thermogenesis Protocol. When the BG series came out, I upped my seafood consumption a lot. I used only candles at night. All of a sudden, my sleep was better than ever! I had no problems anymore in falling to sleep in the evenings, an issue I had suffered from too long. I just thought it was not an issue, but that I was like that. Always plenty of energy late at night. What a mismatch.

Working as a waitress for 12 years, I had too much stress late in the day and still had the ugly habit I had since I was in my teens with acne, to lock myself in the bathroom and stay in front of the bright lights and the mirror and pick on my face late when everyone else was sleeping. If only someone had only told me back then I was about to destroy my hormones!

What benefits have I gained so far?

Today, I wake up in the mornings feeling mostly rested and happy. I get sleepy at 9-10 PM, and I have no troubles falling into sleep, unless I have a second cup of coffee during the day or dark chocolate later in the day.

My skin is better than ever (after many weeks of very strange, dry snaky skin on my upper arms, shoulders, legs after starting the CT, but all gone now), the pores on my nose and face are smaller, and I love how my skin feels like velvet these days!

My body composition is better without any exercise, and teeth are in great shape. I actually sometimes forget to brush my teeth in the morning because my mouth feels and tastes so clean! I floss, brush, and take good care of my teeth.

I have so much power at work. I feel like flying really! If I just don’t mess around with coffee, cream and almonds at work. They make me feel less well, but even then I have lots of amazing energy.

I also know I would not have survived the stress that I have in my life at this point if it was not for Jack’s blog and protocols. It has helped me in an amazing way. I am surprised at how much easier I find solutions now. I have gained perspective and increased mental strength. It has helped me not care for the easy way anymore, but the truth instead, as much as it might hurt. It gives me courage to deal with difficult things. To face the truth can be very uneasy in the beginning. But little by little, one develops a taste for it somehow, and then nothing can stop you!

It sometimes feels like a lion has slowly awakens in me, that is there to protect my sanity, my development, health, and happiness. I feel it has something to do with love, too. Sometimes it (the lion, huh?) gets so strong, it is almost scary.

I enjoy my mornings so much. They are my favorite part of the day. That is when a new day begin full of new possibilities. I often tell myself, this will be an amazing day! I am able to make it into whatever I want. I wake up in the cold bedroom. Sometimes I just lie there doing nothing for a while, smiling and enjoying how good I feel. I fix a huge breakfast. I make a big cup of organic Arabica coffee, I add cardamom to it and usually extra virgin raw coconut oil, or butter, or both, sometimes a raw egg yolk, and then I mix it into a creamy delicious Bulletproof coffee. I go out on my balcony and look into the sky for one minute, if it is not still dark. I look up in the sky frequently these days thanks to Jack.

How does my CT look these days?

I do some face-dunking, just like five times in a bowl of cold water with some snow in it. It is so refreshing! I go and dip into the river, or I do it later in the day. But I do not use the shower anymore at all, except a cold shower at work at times.

My CT is not that much. I am kind of slow in this area, but I do small steps. I dip in the river for one or two minutes now as it is just a hole in the ice, and if I stay longer my toes hurt! I do longer if it is warmer, for sure.

My mom and dad dip into it every morning, too! I could never believe my daddy would go so far but he does now! Yay!

I keep it cool in my apartment, around 58 degrees F. I always put on just so much clothes that I am not freezing when I go out. I have realized I don’t need much clothing. If I do snow work at around 25-30 degrees F, I need just a long-sleeved cotton shirt and leggings and boots and gloves, and I am fine. I do not freeze at all. I am not torturing me in anyway.

I have realized if I balance right at the comfort zone with cold, I get used to colder temps smoothly without any suffering! So that is how I do it. Baby steps. Next winter, I am confident I will go way further. Maybe I will be able to sit one hour in the ice hole like AKMan (a member at the forums living in Alaska) by then.

How does “make food your medicine” work for me in my daily life?

I always choose to eat wild foods when I can; they make me feel the best.

Wild-caught seafood, raw elk, raw liver, or organs from elk. I eat wild berries (seldom fruit in summer; I eat almost only wild berries–they never give me any tummy issues!), a little wild greens here and there that I pick in the garden. They are health bombs for free. They make me feel amazing. Nettle smoothie anyone? The feeling after drinking it is just great, and the taste is nice, too!

I usually eat three times a day, and at least one of them is a huge seafood meal, often more. I like to eat raw a lot. If I feel depressed, I turn to 100 percent raw, and it takes the dark moods away so fast!

Mackerel Sashimi

Breakfast Burger
with raw butter
and fresh dill

Oysters

Pictured to the left is what I had for dinner one day: mackerel sashimi. I sure had many more pieces than in the picture. The foods I eat most often are the delicious salmon tartar, Baltic herring, and dried, raw moose burgers. I often have them for breakfast, I put the burgers in my dehydrator in the evening at body temp, and then in the morning they are crisp and nicely warm. I put lots of coconut oil or butter (raw if I can get) or thin-sliced raw grass-fed beef/lamb fat on them, maybe some raw onion and cucumber and Celtic Sea salt, too. They are so delicious I never get bored of them. I eat quite a lot. I usually have around 300 grams worth of lean moose meat with additional fat for one breakfast.

Pictured to the left is one breakfast burger with raw butter and fresh dill.

If I had to choose one single food above all others, it would be oysters for sure. (Pictured below the breakfast burger) I am not even able to get them every week, but I try my best, so I do eat them quite often these days! Food of the gods, I think. They even look so very beautiful! I always eat them raw, with a few drops of fresh organic lime juice. Imagine, I had my first oyster in my life last winter. It took a while to begin to love them though! If it was not for Jack, I’m afraid I would never have bothered to even try one!

I do have two super foods I enjoy more or less regularly, that are 100 percent Epi-Paleo. 1)Pureed raw and wild-caught fish heads, MHS (mackerel head smoothie) 2) Fermented meat/organs (high meat).

I use them because I have no money for testing and supplements. Really, I am confident when I make my food, my medicine it will work as well! I can tell by how they make me feel, it works great! Something to consider for those who are broken and have a tight budget, too.

MHS: I got the idea about drinking mackerel head smoothies. It was Jack’s fault, actually, telling us how amazing raw seafood is and the stuff about viruses and bacteria.

Thinking about it, I just could not throw away the heads, no way, as the mackerels are expensive here. They are a fatty fish, so I could not make them into broth, either, as I do with some other fish heads. So I figured I could just drink them raw. So into the blender with the chopped heads and water, and all of a sudden I had a drinkable fatty smoothie.

I am holding my breath drinking it, I have to confess. I cannot say the taste is great. Although my daddy just drank one plain and said it wasn’t not bad at all. I told him if he does not want Alzheimer’s like his mom, he needs to drink this stuff and eat lots of fish and dip into the river, too. My mom laughed and said if I told daddy to dive head first into chicken poo, he would do it! My dad knows I love him for sure, so I guess that is why he knows it is only good what I suggest. Soon, he will be sleeping in the basement, too (Inger sleeps in the cool basement of her parents’ home). Poor mom! Maybe she will come, too. But I need to go first. I am the tester, and when they see I get results, they might follow!

Epi-Paleo living gives me lots of funny moments! We laugh all the time at work, and I always tell the latest news about my healing protocol. They think it is too funny. Today we talked about tinfoil hats… a good laughter is healthy for sure!

I felt so great from the smoothie, so I figured it must be very good. As Jack’s Brain Gut series came out, it dawned on me how great they really were. Now, all the viruses and bacteria in the raw heads, the nutrients, too, and fatty acids. I am telling it to people in my life now. Instead of taking expensive Omega-3 supplements, take raw fish heads. They are free and better than any man-made supplement or extracts, I bet!

I just love how the best and healthiest things for us are often there right in front of us for free, like the cold and the dark!

Fermented meat/heart. This is an old remedy from Siberia and also other places around the world that anyone can make for themselves easily at home. Also seen as a delicacy, like in Iceland where they traditionally bury birds in the earth and let them rot for a long time and then enjoy them on special occasions as a feast. Huh. This “high meat” is actually much less yucky (to me at least) than those Icelandic fermented birds. Plenty of beneficial bacteria for our gut. My last batch had an amazing taste, by the way, like a genuine French Gorgonzola from raw sheep milk!

What I also make myself every day, that I feel is very healing, is a jug of fresh water with some dried raw seaweed. This is a jug with Kombu:

I change them up, whatever I get my hands on. I often have Kombu, Sea Spaghetti, or Wakame. I then drink the water throughout the day, and then at one point, I puree the soaked seaweed in my mixer into a smoothie and drink it. I love the taste. I add seaweed to my foods, too. I try to get a good amount in every day. I sometimes make pureed seaweed masks for my face, too; it should be good for aging skin. I am quite sure it is all the seaweeds that have made some minor wrinkles disappear on my face! Okay, I still have some, but who knows maybe they disappear one day, too.

I have gotten fat cravings for now. Must be the winter. I eat quite huge amounts of fat, also just plain. The fats warm me up a lot! I don’t count calories, and I don’t weigh either. Makes life much easier, in my opinion!

Sometimes, I know I have gained some, but I do not stress about it and am learning to think, “Wow, nice curves I have gotten” instead of thinking it is a negative thing. Animals also have seasonally different weight. All of the sudden, the weight is gone again.

Some before and after pictures.

17 years old
60 kg/132 pounds

33 years old
55 kg/121 pounds

The picture to the far left is me at around 17 years old, weighing around 60 kg/132 pounds. The next picture is me at about 33 years old, eating a ketogenic diet weighing about 55 kg/121 pounds. It is not really much difference weight wise, but I am so much more swollen and feeling less well in the left picture. I went swimming with a big T shirt on, so ashamed was I of my body. But sure I loved to bake cakes, and eat them, too.

Some bikini pictures below to show what difference some cold and great foods and light management without exercise / only ketogenic paleo with exercise can do. No major changes but noticeable I think.The first picture is taken around 33 years old. The two pictures on the right were taken this spring after CT-ing a few months (and this has been no heavy CT, just short 1-3 minute dips in ice water and up to 20 minutes in warmer 55 degrees F at the most). Weight is the same 121 pounds/55 kg.

33 years old

33 years old
after CT-ing a few months

33 years old
after CT-ing a few months

What else?

I never waited for the winter before, but this fall I did. My life has taken a different turn that I could have not imagined. I jumped out in nowhere. I had to give up what I had been clinging to, jumping out in the dark. But I can see the light, so I am not that afraid. Why would I be afraid to jump into something as beautiful as that which I perceive at the horizon?

Now, my next thing to try will be to sleep some nights in the basement. I have not yet, as it is not too pretty down there and I love my bedroom and my sleep up here so much, but I am going to do it soon. There are thick concrete walls and two floors of basement, so I bet the bottom one is quite well protected from any radiation. I am so curious if I will feel any different after spending a night down there. I just need to know.

I guess I will have to make a tinfoil hat, too, to put on when reading on my computer. Dark glasses and a weird home-designed tinfoil hat on in front of the screen. Jack sure lets crazy ideas appear on this road to optimal.

There are moments I feel like I have come such a short way. I see people around me all the time that have come so much further than me when it comes to many things. But I always tell myself, it is not about where one is on the road! The only thing that matters is if you are moving in the right direction.

Perspective matters. Sometimes I think it matters more than anything.

Thank you, Jack! Thank you for letting your light shine so generously to greatly benefit me and many others. You have opened a whole new world in front of my eyes. I like this world. It is so beautiful.

About Dr. Kruse

Dr. Jack Kruse is a respected neurosurgeon and CEO of Optimized Life, a health and wellness company dedicated to helping patients avoid the healthcare burdens we typically encounter as we age. He is a member of the American Association of Neurological Surgeons, the Congress of Neurologic Surgeons, and Age Management Medicine Group.